


i lift my eyes and all is born again

by mintpearlvoice



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Medical Trauma, Mental Health Issues, Overwatch Family, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, internalized ableism, past subtextual moira/mercy, talon: exploiting deeply vulnerable field operatives for fun and profit, welcome to gibraltar here are some socks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: Subject Sigma is accustomed to what Talon's commanders call him: unreliable, dangerous, not to be trusted. Like any field operative under Talon's control, he needs to be kept on a tight leash.After being unexpectedly liberated from their grasp, he discovers that Overwatch is very different.(Case in point: has anyone noticed that their demolition expert's hair is on fire?)anyway this is one brainweird person's attempt to make what we know of Sigma's lore less problematic/ableist





	1. Chapter 1

Talon was dissatisfied with their progress. More specifically: Talon was dissatisfied with him.

They’d figured out how to pilot his actions using the dimension slides of his symbiotic connection to the event horizon of a gravitational field. The music- it hypnotized him, controlled him, made him a prisoner in his own mind as much as he was a prisoner here. But it didn’t always work. Sometimes ‘Subject Sigma’s’ reflexes were too slow, his gravitational shield recalling too early. The repercussions for their experimental failures always fell on him, the human host.

Which leaves him sentenced to several days in the quiet room. No crayons, no paper, no tea with his meals. Trays through a slot with paper silverware, because they don’t even trust him with plastic. They don’t trust him to uphold “Talon’s values and agenda.” Sedatives twice daily that leave his head pounding and his mouth dry. He stares at the wall because there is nothing else to do, and feels contentment because the drugs are there to keep him from accessing emotions. (Accessing his powers.)

There is a word for this. He is lucid enough to remember it now, which means Moira will be by soon with his dose.

The word is hell.

The explosion that blows a hole in one wall is certainly not his doing. He’s being compliant. Working to earn back things that are a privilege, not a right.

The booming aftershocks echo. The dust settles grey on his off-green scrubs. Somewhere, an alarm blares.

I should be frightened, he thinks distantly. If not for the drugs.

Screams. Gunshots. The alarm cuts off.

A lanky beanpole of a man skitters in through the smoke. “Oi, you’re the scientist, yeah?”

“I... was,” he says cautiously to this soot-covered stranger. He has exiled himself from science as from humanity. Now he is the experiment.

“The name’s Junkrat. Me an’ my buddy Roadhog- the higher-ups sent us to rescue you. Just sit tight, yeah? We’ll get you out of here in no time.”

He vanishes briefly. Gunshots; the metallic pops of small explosions. A wild laugh and a shout: “Sorry, just had to kill some of your guards! Blimey, there’s a lot of them!”

Why is the man so tall, yet hunched over a wooden leg? Why is the tip of his hairstyle on fire? There is a simple answer to these questions. “I am imagining you,” Subject Sigma states. His handlers say he is unreliable and imagines things often.

“Imagine this, mate,” Junkrat chuckles, shaking his hand. This stranger’s hands are warm and rough and dry. Callouses from physical labor. Dirt under his nails.

An enormous man stomps in, his face concealed by an old-fashioned gas mask. “Talon top brass knows we’re here,” his deep voice issues forth. “We’re going. Now.”

“Anything you want to take with you?” Junkrat asks.

He owns nothing here. His clothes, his soap, his books, his ability to think; all can be given or withheld at Talon’s will. “No,” he says at once. And then, the thought slowly progressing through his weighed-down mind: “...wait, are we leaving?”

They don’t say no; Junkrat lifts some bizarre gadget that looked like a tire bristling with wires and explosives from his narrow, hunched back.

Sigma panics. Phrases that have been drilled into his mind leap to his lips. “But I can’t leave. The doctors say I’m unstable, I’m a danger to myself and others, I’m supposed to be in the quiet room so I learn how to show respect to medical professionals, it’s for my own good-“

“We’ll talk about this at the Watchpoint,” Roadhog mutters, moving behind him.

A sensation he’s familiar with; the prick of a syringe in his thigh, coldness spreading up his veins. Another concussion is the last thing he needs. But for all his height, Roadhog catches him before he hits the ground, as if he weighs no more than hospital linens.

**

Sigma wakes up in a small, quiet, white room. Well, nothing new there. But an awareness slowly emerges: this room is different.

For one thing, this bed has blankets. Real blankets. Not the scratchy, thin hospital blankets, no more than glorified towels, which require him to sneak three or four in order to just stop shivering, but a lovely violet fleece blanket, cozy and light. The bed underneath him feels soft, too. He resolves to further examine his surroundings- and gasps.

The light pouring into the room... that isn’t from fluorescents or a TV screen. It is a window. Whoever his new (captors) caretakers are, they trust him with an actual window, one that doesn’t seem to be barred or glued shut.

For such a long time, Sigma’s conscious existence has been limited to the space of a single hallway. His room. The medicine window. The nurses’ station. The room where they take vitals. The day room, where patients watched TV and ate meals. All deep underground and closely guarded, with security guards making rounds twice an hour to prevent any escapes. That was the size of his whole world.

Now the sea glitters a deep blue. Birds swoop overhead; below, in a paved area, a spiky-haired young person backflips over a robot. And beyond, the whole sea. If he watches long enough, the sun will sink into the ocean like a burning comet, painting the whole sky red and gold. Often, he pressed his face against the window in his hospital (prison), tugged fruitlessly at where it was sealed shut, knowing it was the closest he’d ever be allowed to the outside world. Absently, he pulls at the bottom of the window, expecting resistance. He’s unreliable and unstable, after all.

It slides open. Effortless.

At once he can hear everything. The cry of a seagull. The rush of breaking waves. Laughter from the darting youth below.

And the smell. Fresh air, a little warmer than the cool air indoors, heavy with humidity, tossed by the wind. The smell of the sea. The smell of the world. The outside world.

He has trained himself not to show emotion. Looking at the ocean only makes his eyes sting. But when he glances back and sees what’s on the nightstand?

Most of him was broken long ago, but this breaks his control.

**

People always said “never meet your heroes,” but Mercy is excited for her first face-to-face conversation with Dr. De Kuiper. After all, his research- especially the Sigma Equation- has been essential for so much of Overwatch’s experimental technology. The Valkyrie wingsuit’s hover abilities, Zarya’s enemy-capturing gravity surges, even Tracer’s time-stabilization rig; none of it would exist without his knowledge and advice.

When an experiment performed on a privately owned space station led to his death, she wasn’t surprised. His work had been dangerous, and he had known the risks. She was, however, devastated. Siebren hadn’t just been a scientific mentor, he’d been a friend. Although they’d only ever had time for asynchronous emails, often with pages of scribbled notes attached, she’d considered him as much a part of the fight against evil as any of her comrades-in-arms. She’d wept, but done her best to move on and maintain a clear head.

And no one thought any more of it- until the day when a bleeding but smug Tracer came back to base with three bullet wounds to her torso and a stolen Talon hard drive.

Siebren De Kuiper hadn’t died. Instead, he’d been given treatment in a secret government facility- and after budget cuts, that facility had released him to a private mental health treatment unit. It was just a Talon front. Everyone in that unit was someone Talon wanted in their grasp. From the teenage child of a French politician who’d asked one too many questions, to a private investigator who’d traced disappearances to Moira’s experiments on humans, it was a place they used to keep people silenced and away from the world. Nacht und nebel, how Germany had once kept political prisoners nameless, their movements secret. Night and fog.

Apparently, Dr. De Kuiper was being given a long list of psychotropics. But these weren’t doses you’d use to help someone be mentally healthy. These were doses you’d use to drug someone into submission. To take away memories and give twenty hours of nightmare-filled sleep. Talon wasn’t helping him- they were torturing him.

They’d wiped information specialist Amelie into a mindless killer, twisted Gabriel’s pain-wracked mind until he’d gun down anyone in front of him. Siebren was just a civilian. He’d even spent the Omnic Wars in his laboratory helping the human military, far from any front. He’d never seen combat. From the looks of it, Talon hadn’t cared. 

An alarm beeps on her wristwatch. He should be waking up right about now...

Mercy finds the continent’s most esteemed astrophysicist slumped on the floor next to a half-open window, sobbing over canary yellow non-slip socks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an explanation of my larger headcanons for talon and how its whole thing is basically, like, capitalism and the industrial war machine built on exploitation of marginalized bodies   
> this is going to be... maybe four or five chapters? i've got an outline? i think?

Mercy has enough reasons to hate Talon, but she learns one more reading through the rest of the Sigma files: apparently, Dr. De Kuiper is very self-conscious about having unusual toes. Not giving him footwear was very specifically a power play.

It’s a genetic mutation similar to polydactylism. Except, instead of extra toes, he has an extra joint on each toe. They’re like... foot fingers.

Talon planned that not giving him socks would make him easier to manipulate. As if she couldn’t hate them any more.

The next page: a list of chemical formulas under the heading of Assigned Dosage.

Moira’s angry scrawl: this compound is lethal, do you want me to follow your dosage plan or keep him alive?

Cursive: you will obey.

Her scrawl in return: that’ll be another two medications to keep his organs functioning, you’re damn lucky I’m a genius.

Talon, she’s come to realize, is an organization with two parts: the one-percenters bankrolling it and setting the agenda, and the expendable or vulnerable operatives they force into the field.

Reaper is in agony from the nanites eating at his flesh. Sombra’s cybernetic augmentations are imperfect, and she’s helpless and handless without them. (Doomfist’s vulnerabilities are more difficult to parse, but Angela suspects it might have something to do with the philanthropy in his civilian past; elementary schools aren’t usually very resistant to bombs. Baptiste barely talks about his past, but she knows he was an orphan, and Talon offered him the family he never had. They both have similar suspicions about Vishkar; why is their star architect never allowed to speak on camera, or even run her own social media accounts? It’s suspicious, for sure.)

At first she thought Moira had no leash, that there was nothing keeping her with Talon but her own free will.

Moira does have a leash, though. The leash is everyone else. The chemical cocktails that pacify the nanites enough for Reaper to become solid, the constant maintenance on Sombra’s wrists, how she can fine-tune the drugs Talon provides to slow Amelie’s metabolism into something that won’t stop the woman’s heart. It’s a challenge, and Moira could never walk away from a challenge like that.

She and her former colleagues are separated by an impossible chasm. She knew Gabriel Reyes, brave and thoughtful and devastatingly funny. Just as devastatingly selfless. Once, she’d been surrounded by a swarm of Omnics, her wingsuit useless for escape; Gabriel had risked his life to teleport into the center of the swarm and blast it apart. Amelie could hold a conversation in two languages while translating an encrypted document in a third, identify the origin of a wine from a single sip- and take out an Omnic that had broken into her comms chamber while still giving directions to the away team. Rationing only made her more determined to cook beautifully plated meals, because she was determined that her Overwatch family needed nice things.And Moira-Angela put down the tablet and rubbed her eyes. It was late, that’s all. She needed sleep.Still the memories crept in. Moira, with an energy vibrant as her hair, darting across the laboratory, voice rising as her mouth curled into that wicked smile.

"Do you trust me," Moira had asked right before following Reyes’ broken body into surgery, her fine features serious and harsh.

She’d been preoccupied with making sure the other doctors on shift, civilians all, had Reyes’ biodata. "What is this about-"

"Angela, please, do you trust me." There was a hard, glassy sheen to her eyes; even tears knew their place .It had always been Angel or Mercy, teasing her with nicknames while they survived on strong black coffee and hope.

Startled by her name, she could only stammer out the truth: "of course I do."

"Right, then," Moira had said. Nodded as if she’d suddenly made up her mind. And then they’d both gone into the surgery bay, and Moira had used their experimental nanotechnology to bring Gabriel Reyes back from the dead and into pain, and whisked him to a waiting Talon jet...

Of course Moira had planned everything so far in advance, playing Overwatch for fools. Of course she would never have changed her mind.

It still hurts like hell.

She blinks until her eyes can focus again on the text. Everyone who went over to Talon is beyond her grasp. But her mentor... she can still save him, and she’ll figure out these chemical formulas and reconstitute the designer drug combination Talon had him on. It isn’t safe to have a patient dependent on something, and then suddenly take what they rely on away. A glance at the security monitor. De Kuiper hasn’t requested anything since she persuaded him back to bed; he seems to still be sleeping, curled on his side. Good. She has time.


	3. Chapter 3

They are punishing him. They gave him the window and he violated their trust by opening it. And they’re punishing him. Now he’s lying as still as possible, clutching his skull like he can keep it from flying apart, like he can fend off the invisible hammer-blows of this migraine, doing his best not to be sick all over this very nice blanket they’ve kindly allowed him. The room feels like it’s moving.

Sometimes he’s gotten a few non-essential medications late as a punishment- usually the sleep medication he takes to chase away nightmares, he’s less likely to conspire against Talon if he’s tired, or the pain medication, because his legs still hurt from injuries induced by the research accident- but never all his medicine.

Doctor O’Deorain says there are withdrawal side effects. That the other doctors should always make sure he has medication on time. But he would never be so gauche as to ask for medications, especially since asking would turn into begging for an escape from this pain pounding his skull with every heartbeat, the pins-and-needles tingles of agony from even the blanket’s light weight on his legs.

He will wait and be compliant. Sooner or later, someone will remember that his powers have worth.

Tracer doesn’t know much about science. Things go zip, things go boom, she goes fast. Some things in the lab will be tea, but some are poison and therefore Forbidden Snacks. Etc.

Still, she’s happy to help Mercy by checking in on the rescued civilian, especially since his research helped save her life.

“Hey, I’m Lena Oxton, but you can call me Tracer! You don’t remember me, I don’t think you even knew my name, but your work helped-“

Dr. De Kuiper is under the covers. What she can see of him is tense and trembling, long-fingered hands clenched. She leans closer- he flinches, shoulders rising-

And then she’s sprinting out of the corridor, leaving his room behind her in a flash of blue light, down the stairs and out to the training yards.

Here, amongst the seagulls, she can breathe. She can unsnap a fingerless glove and scrub at her tears- she can cry until she stops, even, because anyone who sees her will know what happened and be kind.

She was afraid just like him once.

Afraid of all the civilian doctors who caused injuries trying to tube-feed her when she was temporally unmoored, gave her scars on the inside in more ways than one. The civilian scientists who said she could pull herself out of the time slip if she was mindful and had willpower, and shouted at her when she couldn’t. The civilian researcher who was callous enough to say within earshot that it would be kindest to hasten her death, and she’d left tears in twelve different dimensions, time spinning out vast.

The way Sigma’s crying is the way she cried then, the way she flinched from even Winston because she wasn’t entirely sure it was him. Pain and fear all at once. Wishing you could die in your own bed rather than let the doctors poke at you any further. The knowledge that you’re hurting and no one will help. Praying for everything and everyone to just shut up and let you die.

Tracer takes deep breaths. It’s the only thing she knows how to do slowly. One, two, three, four. In, hold, out.

She takes her phone out of her messenger bag and looks at the lock screen. Emily and Winston taking a selfie together, and they sent it when she was away on a mission. Her girlfriend and her best friend.

Even when she thought she was alone, that she would dissolve into the timestream, they were there. Fighting for her, arguing her case, arguing with the doctors to let her live.

Jack, pulling every favor he had to get her transferred from the military hospital and into Overwatch’s specialized facility. Mcree reading to her during visiting hours, the melody of his voice a steady constant. Ana, sneaking in to keep an eye on her like a ghost in the night; Mercy pulling all-nighters in the lab. (And Moira, yelling at the doctors... but she’s long gone.)

Her team was there for her.

Dr. D-K might be a civilian, but he’s part of the team. He belongs to Overwatch. They won’t let him think he’s alone.

She shoves her phone back into her bag, readjusts her gloves, and takes off running. Some problems need more than one person to solve.

Sigma has never gone this long without medication, and he observes the side effects with the detachment of practiced dissociation. Ah, so this is the associated contents of my stomach- oh, full-body shaking, that’s interesting, wonder if it’ll become a genuine seizure? I really should be getting more oxygen-

Without the medications still coursing through his system, it’s easier to know that he ought to be frightened. It’s just... there’s no point. After all, nothing belongs to him, not even his life. If his captors want him dead, he dies.

Angela- Mercy, they call her now, and he prays that she has some- asks him something.

Oh. His vitals. He flops out an arm, guessing the numbers won’t be good. This is an experiment, then. To see what happens if someone stops these drugs suddenly. Has he outlived his usefulness to Talon, is that why they’re letting him die so far away-

“I’m engaging the nanite stream from my staff. It should block some of the pain, I hope-“

A beam from her weapon, like sunlight suspended in dust motes. Fascinating how everything it touches stops hurting. He barely even notices Angela’s freckle-faced assistant hooking him up to an IV.

“Nanites,” he manages, voice hoarse. No matter how long he’s been screaming for, how he sounds as a result, this is fascinating. Overwatch’s technology has moved on a great deal during his captivity. “I’m assuming they work on the sensory nerve fibers to increase the production of endorphins, rather than cell regeneration… would I be correct?”

Her blonde hair is falling out of a haphazard bun. It reminds him of the Angela he first met so many years ago, the woman so preoccupied with saving lives that colleagues had to remind her about smaller things like eating and brushing her teeth. Reminds him still further of that young idealist when she smiles.

“Most people guess it’s the opposite way around and assume I’m trying to seal bullets within their skin. I always have to say, no, I’m keeping you on your feet and trying to slow down blood loss, you’re going to feel every piece of shrapnel from that explosion when we get back to base,” Angela replies, shaking her head as if exasperated at some layman compatriot. And, gesturing across the bed: “This is my assistant, Emily Clarke. We’re going to try and get your pain levels down a bit, and keep you from losing more fluids than we can replace.”

That’s a statement, but not what he wants to talk about. “So you use this staff in concert with the wingsuit- would the nanites’ physical properties allow for continuous flight towards a target?”

Another shock of pain through his legs, as if they have fallen asleep and been impaled all at once. The electricity burns. He is vaguely party to the subsequent inhuman scream, to Emily’s panic as she tries to hold his flailing arm.

He comes to full awareness hours later, with Angela, hair haloed by the evening light, apologizing as if he’s worth the words.

“It’s all right. I’m fine now,” he manages, voice hoarse.

“It is most certainly not all right,” she replies, her accent stronger than it usually is in English.

He hasn’t died; Overwatch hasn’t lost their asset. Why is she so upset? Clearly he’s done something wrong, something that earned their wrath. What kind of mind game is this? “May I ask a question, Dr. Ziegler?”

“Of course,” she says, smiling warmly, although there’s exhaustion in her eyes.

“I’ve never been ordered to go that long without my medication prior to this… did I do something that was against the rules? I’d like to know what the rules are so I can avoid transgressing them in the future.” Every doctor tends to have their own misdeeds they’re particularly harsh on.

The sun is sinking into the ocean, and Angela’s face sinks as well before she meets his gaze once more, delicate features set. “Nothing. You haven’t done anything wrong. I made a mistake by failing to calculate the withdrawal time of your medication, and then working on longer-term projects when I should have been formulating the compounds.” She takes off her gloves, shaking out sweaty hands as she talks. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that. What you endured just now... it’s entirely my mistake. I failed to communicate with you properly, and that’s on me. You understand that, right? I fucked up. You were fine, Siebren. You did nothing wrong.”

He twists the fleecy blanket in his hands, noticing the way sunset makes shadows on the desk and chair, the post-IV bandaid in the crook of his arm.

It is easier to notice than to think.

I have done nothing wrong, he’d protested when the government agents hijacked his ambulance after the crash. Why are you imprisoning me? Please, I can control the music, I can control the gravitational fluctuations, you’re making it worse by frightening me, just give it time.

I have done nothing wrong, he’d claimed when Talon was furious at him for fighting off their puppeteering to let civilians escape. I don’t agree with the mission of your organization, and I don’t agree that you’re the only ones who can keep me from being a danger to myself and others, either.

I have done nothing wrong, he tried to explain when they searched his bare room for contraband food, for extra crayons, for anything that could be used to put him back into the Quiet Room.

Slowly, he’d learned it was safer not to protest. That the only way to avoid more punishment was to bow his head and endure, no matter how humiliating or horrible the treatment he received. And the best way to keep safe meant internalizing the rules. Internalizing the idea that he was dangerous and evil, that he was a mindless weapon only Talon could wield.

Now his former student was admitting that she’d been wrong. As far as he could remember, doctors in institutions were never wrong… well, except him.

If she had been wrong, then who else was?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact, apparently you can have auditory hallucinations without being on the schizophrenia spectrum, and the presence of hallucinations alone aren't enough to make a schizophrenia diagnosis?   
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28826411  
> congrats, you've just Learned A Thing 
> 
> my headcanon is that s. de k. has lived with hallucinations all his life, was more or less used to them, and then, BOOM, 24/7 CLASSICAL MUSIC KEYED TO THE MOVEMENTS OF CELESTIAL BODIES AND LOCAL GRAVITATIONAL MANIPULATION, AND ALSO UNCONTROLLABLE SUPERPOWERS.   
> the music isn't inherently negative, as far as hallucinations go... but the fact that it's tied into his gravity powers, and his gravity powers get wonky when he's panicking, became a negative feedback loop while in the government's and Talon's care.
> 
> none of the mental illness stuff i deal with involves hallucinations or anything hallucination-related, so i'd welcome any links that anyone wants to point me to, i guess? 
> 
> picked a generic British surname for Emily, figured odds are she had some kind of civilian/base job with Overwatch
> 
> tracer probably does this a lot to emily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiviQfLyQX4  
> (it's a vid where a guy comes out of surgery and is so high he doesn't recognize his wife, but keeps telling her how pretty she is... lesbian culture energy)

**Author's Note:**

> maybe a one-shot maybe tbc?  
> title is a paraphrase of sylvia plath because i'm a pretentious english major like that


End file.
